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2000 AHN AWARD WINNER: BETSY DAMON
The Arts and Healing Network applauds Betsy Damon for her vision, courage, and perserverance in creating environmental artworks that address issues of water conservation. Her most recent work includes the creation of the Living Waters Park in Chengdu, China. The purpose of this park is two-fold: to help purify the local water supply, which had grown dangerously polluted, and to provide pleasant surroundings for people to wander, converse, and observe nature in action. The design includes a series of ponds that contribute to cleaning the water, a pump house designed to look like old Sichuan tea houses, an ampitheatre that seats 400, and the removal of retaining walls. The result is a large-scale park that is not only lovely, but educational and purifying.
Upon receiving the AHN Award Betsy Damon wrote the following thoughts to share with visitors to this web site:
"I give you my hand," I say to the person next to me in the circle and everyone repeats the words as they take the hand next to them, next we go around again saying our hands form a circle and thirdly our circle is powerful. A web of relationships is created from which we can all go into world with the strength of each other.
In 1985 while working on a riverbed with ten artists, I felt in my body what was happening to every living thing when water quality is lost. At the end of working all day in the riverbed, I saw that the web of life was woven by water. At that moment I knew that I would give myself to water. Water became my teacher, and guide. By listening to this source of life I learned what this young person never forgot.
'When we forget the water
We forget the child
Who begins in the water?
When we forget the child
We forget ourselves and then
We forget the world.'
-Florence Daley, Cottonwood, MN.
When I was young, art was my escape from the world and I could create my own world. Leonardo and Cézanne were two of my greatest sources of inspiration as people who combined art and science. Learning how to be an artist in the world, to make art in community was a process that took me 30 years. I slowly evolved through the feminist art movement with role models like Judy Chicago, Pauline Oliveros, Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, and Emma Goldman.
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A Collage of Images from the
Living Water Park in Chengdu, China
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At some point I followed a voice inside of myself that said you know what to do, go do it. These guides assisted me in China to bring many together, try things everyone said were impossible. It was the relationships we made in trying that opened the doors to make a park."
For more information about Betsy Damon's work, please e-mail her at BDamon7367@aol.com.
Learn More About the AHN Award
Visit the April 2005 AHN News to read updates on past recipients of the AHN Award and learn how their inspirational work has been evolving.
Read the Greenmuseum.org's interview with the Arts and Healing Network.
Return to AHN Award intro page
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